Friday, May 31, 2013

REVIEW: KYLESA - ULTRAVIOLET

We
all suffer from demons of defilement at some point. I won’t pretend to
totally understand the ins, outs, and what-have-yous of the Kilesa Mara
mentioned in Buddhism, but they seem to represent the factors that
delude us and cloud our minds, like greed and ignorance. Kylesa were
named after some of these strong forces, but after listening to their
newest album Ultraviolet
I don’t think the music is suffering from any of these “mind poisons.”
This is a daring, expansive album building from their psychedelic crunch
and double-drummer pummel , full of large ideas and progressive
melodies. Unfortunately, with great experimentation comes a varying
degree of success. Still, you can’t make progress through the forest
without stepping into a few ditches and bear traps along the way.

The
familiar sludgy Savannah stomp roars from the opening seconds on
“Exhale,” featuring the best tandem vocal work on the album as Laura
Pleasants and Phillip Cope trade barbed lyrics with venom and
conviction. The song feels like riding red waves on a splinter of
driftwood, surrounded by sharks and figuring out how you’re going to
kill all these finned bastards with the guitar on your back as your only
weapon. Opening with the most vicious song on the album may make what
follows slightly disarming for those seeking more of the same mud and
blood. But clearly those listeners weren’t paying enough attention to
the moments of light in Spiral Shadow,
because those seeds of melody have blossomed here, an album later.
Sure, there’s the massive stoner riffs of “Grounded” and the excellent
bong-blitzed burner “Vulture’s Landing,” but most of the album is more
pensive, brooding, and eases forward with entrancing rhythm and nearly
oxymoronic bright melodies that paint the black’n’gray sky with strokes
of turquoise and (ultra)violet.

Some
of these songs work beautifully, like the Porno For Pyro smoking hesher
hash vibe of “Quicksand,” and “Low Tide,” which captures spacey new
wave pop that could get the goth kids at the nearest cellar night club
two-stepping. Others struggle with delivering the melodic undercurrent
without distracting from the main pull of the song, or worse yet, murder
the momentum. “Steady Breakdowns” suffers from the latter, kicking off
with witchy occult rock before vanishing into smoke and space dust as
the song loses focus. “Drifting” is just a mess, unfortunately closing
the album with a bombardment of disagreeing parts played with the
enthusiasm of a guilty elegy. The overall results may be inconsistent,
leading to frustrating so-god-damn-close moments where you understand
that sometimes less is definitely more, but it’s also fascinating and
inspiring. Beneath the proggy spazz-outs and the lightning strikes of
pop melody this is still a loud rock album, just one that values
patience and excitedly experiments with tone. In the middle of the
record Pleasants sings that “You have lost your soul.” After listening
to this record it’s clear she’s not singing to a mirror, because Kylesa
is displaying more soul and courage than any previous recording, even if
it doesn’t pound mountains to dust like Static Tensions.